Portia di Rossi tells grandma “I’m Gay”

Portia de Rossi spoke about some of the difficulties of coming out to her family.

The former Ally McBeal star’s sexuality was thrust into the public eye when her realtionship with Ellen de Generes became public. The star, who’s birth name is Amanda Lee Rogers, had previously dated Francesca Gregorini, but broke up in order to date America’s most famous lesbian.

Though Ms Rossi has often spoken of the support that she received from her family when she came out, it seems that the star was reluctant to break the news to her grandma. Realising that facts about the very public relationship would sooner or later find their way to the 99-year-old, Ms Rossi asked her mum to help her break the news.

Ms Rossi asked “my mum to show my grandma photos of me and Ellen, to kind of tell her for me. She went back and showed her photos and said that we lived together.” The star, who famously attributes her slim figure to only eating standing up, said: “I thought it was done.”

However, when Ms Rossi spoke candidly to her grandmother about the relationship, the 99-year-old was completely surprised: “I knew you were living with Ellen and all this time I was thinking, I hope that lesbian isn’t hitting on my granddaughter!”

PinkNews covers religion, politics, entertainment, finance, and community news for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community in the UK and worldwide. Founded to produce broadsheet quality journalism for the LGBT community, we cover politics to theology in an intelligent manner.